


soft as a whisper, sincere as a confession

by zanate



Category: Versailles (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F, First Kiss, I Started Writing This A Month Ago But My Life Is A Fucking Chaos, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-05
Updated: 2017-07-05
Packaged: 2018-11-23 15:27:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11405241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zanate/pseuds/zanate
Summary: "If it is love you look for, I am sad to say you must look somewhere else. It is all around you, in all places except where we have been taught it should be."





	soft as a whisper, sincere as a confession

**Author's Note:**

> this is set during 2x06, right after marie-thérèse, liselotte and maintenon walk out of the orgy. they get so little screentime that this may have plausibly happened between 2x06 and 2x07 and we'd never know about it ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

As soon as the door clicked shut behind Madame Scarron, the Queen gave an exhausted sigh and let her full weight fall as she sat on the chaise in the middle of the room. She ran her hand across her brow as two ladies-in-waiting began pulling gilded pins out of her hair, each one falling into a bronze box with a clink. Liselotte stood awkwardly to the side, wringing her black lace veil in her hands. Neither the Queen nor her ladies addressed her.  
“Perhaps I should go as well”, she said. “It is late, and I feel I am interrupting your privacy”. 

“No, stay.” The Queen said all of a sudden, leaning towards Liselotte, who was making for the door. Then, as if not to sound too pleading or too commanding, she added, “Stay, please. If you could. I promise you are not interrupting anything. May I offer you something? A cup of chocolate, perhaps?” Slowly, Liselotte turned away from the door. Not much was awaiting her in her rooms, which at night were either deathly quiet or ringing with the arguments between her husband and his lover. The Queen, on the other hand, was one of the people at Versailles whose company she truly enjoyed. She gave a small nod.

“Not chocolate, but you may offer me a biscuit or two. I am starving, but I feared dinner would make me ill again. Perhaps trying a Spanish biscuit will fare better than subjecting myself to a French feast.” Liselotte sat down on a chair across from where the Queen was sitting. Marie-Thérèse made as if she were to say something to Liselotte, but then folded her fingers in her lap and called for her ladies. One of them brought her a cup of bitter chocolate.

“ _Un bizcocho para Madame _.” She ordered them over her shoulder. Then, she turned to Liselotte. “I was like that when I first arrived. Could hardly bring myself to eat anything they served me, and when I did, it was usually cake.”  
A lady-in-waiting brought her a porcelain plate with small biscuits. Liselotte nodded her thanks. __

__“Frankly, I have no idea how they manage to keep their food down. For something so completely devoid of taste, I would not expect it to make me sick so often.”_ _

__“The secret? Buckets and buckets of wine.” The Queen smiled as she made the remark, and for a moment Liselotte could see the woman hiding beneath the steel veneer of the stern and cold Queen of France._ _

__“France is… bizarre, to say the least.”_ _

__“You have not seen the half of it.”_ _

__“After tonight, I would not be so sure. I have seen the whole of persons I would much prefer to leave to the imagination.” Liselotte said, as she brushed the crumbs off her skirt.  
“Tonight’s events are usual. It is what they do to entertain themselves in this prison.” _ _

__“In that case, I expect to have many arguments with the locals about how to pass my time. My idea of fun has always leant more towards horseback than bare-back, but I doubt that is a popular opinion here.” There was that smile again, along with a short laugh so quiet that it would surely have been lost among the noise of the salons. Liselotte knew it was rare for the Queen to smile, and she counted herself lucky to have seen it._ _

__“Not among the likes of Madame de Montespan, no.” This the Queen said with a touch of bitterness, and looked down at her chocolate cup. For a moment, the room was silent but for the soft hush of the ladies’ skirts as they as they exited the room, leaving their mistress alone with Liselotte and the candle burning bright between them. Liselotte gathered her courage, and asked Marie-Thérèse the question that had been burning in her mind since the first time she had seen her staring daggers at Madame de Montespan._ _

__“Are you in love with His Majesty?”_ _

__“I was, once. Very much. But it was many years ago that I stopped loving him.” Marie-Thérèse looked at the candle as she said so, its flame bathing the sharp planes of her face in a golden light, casting highlights over the dark hair that hung like a curtain around her face._ _

__“Then why all the anger? All the headaches? I cannot think of something worse than losing sleep over someone for whom I do not care for, and who does not care for me.”_ _

__“Why? It was never about love. Rather…” Marie-Thérèse ran a hand down the back of her hair, letting her fingers tangle in its dark waves. Looking up as if Heaven could help her form her feelings into words. “Rather dignity. Peace of mind. Being able to walk down the halls of my own palace without being looked on as if I am the target of a cruel joke, or worse, with pity.” Then, after a breath; “Do you love Monsieur?”_ _

__Liselotte thought carefully about what to answer. She had never truly asked herself this question. Not during their first meeting, not during her wedding night. It seemed as though it was not part of the marriage, even though, by all logic, it should be._ _

__“I wanted to love him, I cannot tell you how much. I was willing myself with all my strength to fall in love with him all the way from Heidelberg to Versailles. It seemed like I had to. I had to, he was- “_ _

__“A handsome prince from a foreign land, so rich the gates of his palace are wrought in gold. Like in a fairy-tale.” It was the way she said it, as if repeating a childhood rhyme that had long since lost its meaning, that made Liselotte realize that Marie-Thérèse had once been her. A hopeful girl, raised on tales of kings and queens and opulent weddings, who, when the time came, was dressed in fashions which would later be mocked behind her back and made to sign a piece of paper selling her off to a stranger who did not love her, and never would. Now the pair of them, jaded and rough around the edges, shared a tragic bond not only with each other, but with their mothers and their sisters, generations upon generations of duchesses, princesses, and queens. Liselotte let out a humorless chuckle._ _

__“And look where those fairy-tales have landed us.” A pair of princesses in a glittering palace, with all the gold their fathers could dream of, clad in dresses of pure silk. Wives whose husbands considered them obstacles, women surrounded by swarms of constantly whispering nobles that were simply waiting to watch them fall. “Our mothers should have warned us.”_ _

__“Will you have the heart to warn your daughters, when it is their time?”  
Liselotte thought of Monsieur’s daughters. Anne-Marie and Marie-Louise, asleep in their beds at Saint-Germain, two charming girls who Liselotte already considered her own. How could she tell them? That marriage is nothing but a contract, that their husbands would likely have lives and loves of their own, that one day they would find themselves in a candlelit room realizing that their upbringing was nothing but falsehoods? Liselotte did not have to say a word. Marie-Thérèse already knew the answer._ _

__“If it is love you look for, I am sad to say you must look somewhere else. It is all around you, in all places except where we have been taught it should be.” It was not shame that was in the Queen’s voice. Rather a sense of acceptance, of acknowledging a harsh truth which was always present, but never voiced._ _

__“You talk as if you have found it.”_ _

__“I have. Thrice. Affairs which I repent for but I do not regret.”_ _

__“Thrice…” She wondered about who the Queen might fall in love with. Would they be handsome? Intelligent? Alike the King or completely different? “I doubt such luck will fall upon me.”_ _

__“Do not say such things. Someone must already be in love with you. Kind, witty, and beautiful as you are.” Marie-Thérèse placed her slender hand on the back of Liselotte’s._ _

__“Beautiful? I have caught you in a lie, now.” Liselotte hoped the joke would distract from the quiver in her voice, not only from admitting her insecurity, but from Marie-Thérèse’s presence, so close to her and so unlike anything she’d ever felt before._ _

__“Liselotte.” It was the first time the Queen had addressed her by name. It was a small thing, and yet Liselotte found that it mattered. “You should not listen so much to what ill-wishers say. You are far, far easier to love than I. The day you least expect it, you will open your eyes and see someone that loves you.”_ _

__“How can you be so sure?”_ _

__Marie-Thérèse leant forward, and kissed her on the lips._ _

__On the few occasions that Monsieur had kissed her it had felt forced, as if he were trying to prove a point by way of a kiss. Marie-Thérèse’s kiss felt different. Soft as a whisper and sincere as a confession. There was honesty in the warmth of her lips and the way they parted, honesty in the brush of her thumb against Liselotte’s cheek. She only opened her eyes after they had broken away, and the calm smile on Marie-Thérèse’s face only made Liselotte want to kiss her again._ _

__“Good night”, Marie-Thérèse said in a quiet voice. Liselotte’s answer was a smile, which she wore all the way down the empty halls and the winding staircases, all the way back to her rooms, as night gently gave way to morning._ _

**Author's Note:**

> elisa lasowski and jessica clark came up to me at 2am in a dennys parking lot and told me that [lisethérèse was real ](https://mcntespan.tumblr.com/post/162441028135/mataestrellas-liseth%C3%A9r%C3%A8se-is-real)  
> hmu on [ tumblr ](https://mcntespan.tumblr.com/)


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